A message from Caitlin (not from Christian Slater; he is just her puppet!).

Y’all! Please welcome our newest diarist, Caitlin Hazell! She made the drawing above, and will continue to make weekly visual diaries for us until she is no longer a teenager, and we have to put her out to pasture. (Pasture = making other kinds of illustrations for Rookie on an almost-weekly basis, which is what has happened to Minna, as she has graduated out of the Teen Diaries category.) If you want to see more of Caitlin’s stuff, look at her Tumblr. We are so excited to have her here!

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EmmieAugust 22nd, 20127:57 PM

Katherine, the first few weeks of college were sucky and overwhelming for me. it seemed like everyone was making friends and having an awesome time while i had a few awkward acquaintances and roommates who loved trash tv a little to genuinely. i really encourage you to embrace the situation, though. It sounds sleezy and guidance counselor-y, but in my experience, deciding things suck and choosing to quit or leave before you give them a full chance is not the best approach.. because then you pin all your hopes on the next thing being awesome. And usually crazy new and different things aren’t that awesome in the beginning. If i could talk to every nervous incoming freshman, I would tell them to talk to everyone, even the people that you think you won’t like. Everyone, regardless of how calm and at ease they look, is scared and nervous and in desperate need of friends. If you take the initiative and approach people, you will get friends. even if they aren’t the type of people you would have thought. Freshman year is the best time for making tons of friends, which will subsequently whittle down into your core group. I’m confident you’ll have a better time soon! (unless you are having an awesome time and just felt a bit bleh when you wrote this.) I hope this isn’t to lecture-y and stuff, but I want you to have a brilliant time. And I guarantee you can if you get out there and show people how cool you are. College just got progressively better for me, until I was one of THOSE people nearly in tears when I graduated this may. carpe diem! And good luck!

Ruby, what I want to know is why you were taking the test? That seems more interesting then the test itself. Oh and I forgot to tell you as a theater person and a Harry Potter fan it’s totally awsome and I am totally jealous that you got to be Malfoy

WAIT DYLAN I LOVE THE PRETTY PARLOR! I lived in Seattle for a few years and it was one of my favorite spots in the city. I also know that soccer field, the one with the fence in Capitol Hill? And that record store. I felt like you sort of described my thoughts while driving through Seattle when I went back once.

(PS. I’m hoping it was only an accident that Cupcake Royale was not included in this?)

Hey, Ruby. I had to do that too, just a few months ago, and it had to do with a diagnosis too. I did them all pretty quick which left them in amazement, kinda. They didn’t tell me my IQ though, just that I was ‘really smart and above average’ blahh. You’ll be okay, you’re a smart one.

Dylan- I’m 20, and I just moved to Seattle last fall to go to school. I go to Cornish, so Capitol Hill is my neighborhood now. I just got my first apartment up on the hill last weekend. :) I’ve been feeling a lot of what you’ve been talking about in regards to my own hometown- which is nothing like Seattle, but incredibly beautiful in a different way. Finishing being a teenager is scary and exciting and I’m barely figuring it out. I wish you so much luck on your new LA adventure, and reading this just made me so excited to keep exploring and discovering all the things you love so much.

that’s fantastic naomi, congratulations! when i got my a level results four years ago (!!!) the school asked a few of us to come in really really early so the paper could take photos of us. somewhere on the evening standard website is immortalised a very fake hug between me, my friend, and another girl. weirdly though, after all the build up, getting those final grades felt a little flat. i felt the same getting my degree results in june. a relief, but not really a surprised. then the other day i was cleaning my teeth and suddenly felt a huge burst of elation – i got through a truly miserable university experience with an actual degree. wahoo!
(and now i never ever have to go back!!)

Naomi, your entries are probably my favorites, partly because of your lovely writing style, and partly because over the past year my social anxiety has hit a difficult high, and it kind of helps to hear about someone who has similar feelings. School starts this Monday for me, and even though I wish I didn’t have to go back, I’m not so scared anymore.

dyl pickle, this was beautiful. i think it is necessary to let go of seattle angst and to just love the city and have as much fun as you can. we’ve talked about this before, but growing up in this city and in the circles we’ve grown up in makes you super jaded but now that we are on the other side of all of it, we can see how silly the whole thing was. both good silly and bad silly. i completely understand the love/hate relationship with Seattle. maybe we will just learn to love it even more as we grow older and become different people. you’ve done a lot in the first 19 years of life. happy to be celebrating this next chapter with you. see ya tonight! xx

Yoo-hoo! August’s theme is GIVE AND TAKE, and we’d like to take into consideration whatever submissions you have to give about that! (Even/especially if they’re as cheesy as we just were.) Send pitches to submission@rookiemag.com. ✴

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Rookie is a website for teenage girls. With monthly-themed content, we update three times every weekday, and once a day on weekends. Click here to find out where to send stuff you'd like us to see. Learn about the people who write this thing here.